Books: a literary discussion

So I've been eying and lusting after a nook and its fancy new 1.3 firmware even though I know I can't afford one. And all that looking at something meant to read books made me think about...BOOKS.

Let's talk about books. Anybody read anything recent that was really good? Have an obscure old favorite?

Where do you read books? When do you read them? What books do you read? How do you read books?

Etc and so forth.

If it involves books, say it. I'd like some good recommendations on recently published books and currently running ongoing series, too.

My favorite book of all time is Dumas's "Count of Monte Cristo"(or at least the unabridged English translation), though I of course love the geek standbys as well(Hitchhiker's Guide, Neuromancer, Slaughterhouse-Five, Snow Crash, et all). I also have Star Wars books as somewhat of a guilty pleasure.

Also, this isn't the thread about pictures of boobs. There shouldn't be pictures of boobs in this thread.

...unless it's a picture of a book that just HAPPENS to contain boobs. Because then it's absolutely on-topic and worthy of discussion.

I just realized that Pottermore.com is now open, and subsequently Harry Potter is officially available to buy on ebook!

Now, there is one thing I need to mention: The Pottermore website does sell different versions (translations) of Harry Potter, but you can only buy the ebook and audiobook versions made for your country of residence. This means that if you want the Stephen Fry version of the HP audiobooks (as Stephen Fry is far superior to Jim Dale) you have to set your country of residence to the UK.

I'm reading "The Last of the Templars" as my final book in the six book challenge. The blurb gave me the distinct impression it was similar to the first Broken sword game, in that the cult is rising again and they travel across the world to stop them. Or something.

S'alright, much like books about food, drink and travel, you'd rather just experience the subject matter than listen to somebody prattle on about it. Even if they are as eloquent witty and charming as Stephen Fry.

I've been reading books on my iPad lately and have been downloading free epubs for public domain books that I have always wanted to read (or read when I was a kid or a teenager and mostly have forgotten). Project Gutenberg is great for getting epubs for popular public domain books, like Sherlock Holmes, or A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court, or A Christmas Carol. It's not so great for less popular books though.

I've been scouring the internet looking for an epub for A Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, and the only one I could find was one for sale on iTunes for $0.99. The story is available all over the internet in HTML format, so paying $1 seemed kind of silly.

That was until I decided to make an ePub of it myself. Egads, what a pain in the neck that turned out to be (probably because I went the route of doing all the HTML by hand in Wordpad rather than using an HTML editor). After two days of sorting out all the errors in my HTML code, it's done now though. So I can finally read the story with iBooks, but now I kind of wish I wasn't so cheap and paid the dollar to save myself the aggravation.